But somehow, The Huffington Post blog team has cut off my posts and blocked me from being able to login to the new publishing platform. Here’s the top of my archive today.

And you will notice a long gap between my last two published posts in NOV. 2014 and my most recent publications on the new Contributor Platform in OCT. 2106. I had been allowed to publish posts since NOV. 2014 but not 1 of the 70+ posts I submitted got released to the blog.

I struggled with this loss in my publishing platform. I wrote letters to Arianna, the woman who invited me into the publishing platform in the first place. I wrote letters to Brittany Wong the woman who wrote a profile about me and my journey as a positive divorced dad. I wrote letters to the email address for corrections and issues from the blog team. (blogteam@huffingtonpost.com) And for two years I got nothing.

Then The Huffington Post finally made the transition to the new platform. And in that process I was given a credential to login and create my NEW account. Which I did on October 6, 2016. I updated my profile for the new platform. I got a new author’s page http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/jm32austin-893, and was set up to finally rejoin the ranks of Huffington Post blogger.

And so I started out with a few posts in my sweet spot topics. Divorce and Health and Fitness. And to my surprise, the new Contributor Platform allows writers to push the post live without “editor” intervention. So all four of my posts went LIVE.

And once of them, the “Dear Ex-wife” post began to trend. Within an hour I had over 3,000 views directly from The Huffington Post. And they hadn’t even added me or promoted me in a section yet. The post was taking off in the generic posting on The Blog.

Of course, I was thrilled. I looked for another post, the last Brad and Angelina post, that I could throw into the stream to up my traffic. And BOOM. It was all taken down.

And now none of my 2016 posts are live.

What could have happened? I speculate all the time.

Someone on the blog team has suppressed my publishing back in 2014. (Without telling me why or giving me recourse to remedy my transgression.)

My viral post was threatening to some editor so they took it down. And then proceeded to take all of my recent posts down, to complete the suppression.

Someone on the blog team saw my posts, connected the dots with 2014’s suppression and re-killed my publishing platform.

In all of these cases there is a problem if The Huffington Post is attempting to foster a community spirit with their new Contributor Platform.

The kumbaya statement of community with the Contributor Platform looks like this,

“The community we are working to build here is one where diverse, vibrant and original ideas are celebrated and elevated. We welcome posts that embody that free-speech ethos, even when those viewpoints differ from our own.”

And then comes the hard part,

“We reserve our right to remove posts that abuse that spirit of community, such as hate speech, anything overtly commercial in nature and and posts that we believe may be attempting to mislead the public in some way. There may be other times when we will remove a post that has been flagged by our community for other reasons, including matters of professionalism and taste. We hope and expect those times to be rare and we will not take these decisions lightly. But in building this community, we respect the right of its members to be vocal about their objections. When those objections arise, we will leverage the sound judgement of our editors to determine what is best for the spirit of the space we’re trying to create.”

And yet there is no mention of the community of editors, the conversation that should be had around any removal or suppression. So far, even on the new Contributor Platform I have been suppressed, on all of my posts, and not given any explanation or justification for what went wrong. And I don’t expect my record is going to be any better than it was since 2014. Maybe they’ll open a new platform and give me a credential to login there, who knows.

Three Rules of an Open Community

The community rules.

The community can discuss the rules.

Questions about the rules should be allowed and discussed in the community.

When you take out the third rule, you’ve created the same problem you had with the old platform. When editors can suppress writers and not give any explanation then there is no community.

I realise there are thousands of writers who are willing to write for The Huffington Post for free. I am one of those writers. And there a thousands more asking to be let into the community every day. But if you really want to create a community you need to have a feedback mechanism. We are people. We are part of the community. And we deserve an explanation when our post or our entire publishing rights have been rescinded.

I have never gotten any explanation or response in two years of requesting feedback. I lucked into a loophole when the new system was brought online. And then I am merely suppressed again, without explanation or response to my repeated requests for information. I’m guessing, from the comments on my previous posts about this issue, that I am not alone in this.

Dear Arianna Huffington Post and The Blog Team, your Statement of Community is just pretty words. Until you provide a mechanism for feedback and give all of your writers an opportunity to communicate with you, there is no community. You have created the idea of community while behaving like the same all-ruling dictator that we have come to know. Tolerance is our only recourse.

The message of your community becomes more transparently BS when you realise there are many writers that have been cut off without explanation, like myself.

I’d love to hear what happened. I’d love to know how to get my publishing turned back on. I’d love to know if you still value the 70+ posts that are still live and still generating traffic on your blog. I know you no longer value me or my voice. But I’d at least like you to tell me why.

Huffington Post has launched a new publishing platform. And for part of one day I was allowed, once again to publish my articles on single parenting. And then they discovered my post going viral and they killed my account. I’m still in some odd form of stasis. I’m still ON the platform, but I’m not able to load the platform. I’m guessing the company that admins the program doesn’t have an easy way to suppress authorised users. So today, when I try to load the contributor platform it goes into some broken load/reload sequence and never escapes until I quit the browser.

If you go look, my new contributor page is still online: John McElhenney on The Huffington Post. You’ll notice the last four posts, if you try to load them will result in the following screen.

Okay, so what can be going on here? Why won’t the Huffington Post Blog Team, the divorce editor Brittany Wong, or Arianna herself answer my question about why I would be banned from publishing on the new contributor platform.

Well, the entire idea of “contributor” only holds together if you look at their community statement. Here’s the little part they put in about removing posts from the new platform.

We reserve our right to remove posts that abuse that spirit of community, such as hate speech, anything overtly commercial in nature and posts that we believe may be attempting to mislead the public in some way. There may be other times when we will remove a post that has been flagged by our community for other reasons, including matters of professionalism and taste. We hope and expect those times to be rare and we will not take these decisions lightly. But in building this community, we respect the right of its members to be vocal about their objections. When those objections arise, we will leverage the sound judgement of our editors to determine what is best for the spirit of the space we’re trying to create.

That’s all fine and dandy, but if there is no recourse, no way to ask “What happened?” then they have violated the true spirit of an open community. Apparently the blog team has oversight on the new platform. So if ONE of my posts was flagged, why were all four of them taken down? If I was given publishing credentials, why were they taken away within hours of my first post? If I had a successful post on The Huffington Post why would you suppress that post, especially if there were no clear violations of your trust agreement?

Dear Arianna,

I know you are no longer involved in the day-to-day execution of the Huffington Post. While I applaud your opening the new Contributor Platform, and even your grand gesture in the Statement of Community that surrounds and empowers the new system, I am sorry to say, the lack of transparency is death to openness. An open community means there are channels for communication when things go wrong. If your blog team never responds to a contributor and yet continues to suppress that contributor’s writing, isn’t that a violation of your own statement of community?

When you say “we will leverage the sound judgement of our editors to determine what is best for the spirit of the place we are trying to create” don’t you think that information should also be made public? If the blog team suppresses material, shouldn’t they also answer requests for information about why?

If the Huffington Post wants to create an open community bounded by ethics and moral inclusiveness, they should not also engage in hidden and unfounded suppression of valuable and reasonable material.

I am optimistic that you will answer my question about why four of my posts were accepted, published, and then suppressed in a matter of hours. I am also optimistic that you will reinstate my publishing privileges, as you so warmly welcomed me to the Huffington Post publishing family over three years ago.

Here’s the statement of community from the New Huffington Post Contributor Platform.

Statement of Community

The Huffington Post’s Contributor Network is a forum for ideas, discussion and diverse viewpoints. We offer a state-of-the-art platform that can help you bring your work to one of the internet’s largest audiences.

Be interesting, be entertaining, be provocative, have a point of view – but do it with a great respect for the readers and writers who join you on these pages. The community we are working to build here is one where diverse, vibrant and original ideas are celebrated and elevated. We welcome posts that embody that free-speech ethos, even when those viewpoints differ from our own.

We reserve our right to remove posts that abuse that spirit of community, such as hate speech, anything overtly commercial in nature and and posts that we believe may be attempting to mislead the public in some way. There may be other times when we will remove a post that has been flagged by our community for other reasons, including matters of professionalism and taste. We hope and expect those times to be rare and we will not take these decisions lightly. But in building this community, we respect the right of its members to be vocal about their objections. When those objections arise, we will leverage the sound judgement of our editors to determine what is best for the spirit of the space we’re trying to create.

All good and fine until you cross some invisible boundary and are silenced without so much as a peep about why, how you can get reinstated, or what the fuck happened. For over a year now, The Huffington Post has allowed me to POST on their internal publishing platform, but then have refused to go live with any of my content. This is while 75 or so posts are live and gaining traffic for the site on my profile page. I still get traffic from The Huffington Post every day.

But then HuffPo moved to a new platform.

And the Contributor Platform was born. And last week, I used my credentials in the form above and was promptly given access and publishing rights to once again go-live on The Huffington Post.

So my question is this. What happened the first time and why didn’t the blog team respond to my 10, or so, requests for further information? What happened this time and why was my account suspended just as one of my posts was generating significant traffic? I’ve asked Brittany Wong, my old Divorce editor, as well as the blogteam@huffingtonpost.com to explain what’s happened, and to help me correct the problems so I can get back to publishing on The Huffington Post. My guess is I’ve fallen into some “contributor” slush pile and they simply ignore all requests from these “former” contributors. But why wouldn’t they come out and say that?

The statement above gives them the right to take down anything that is found too offensive or commercial. But none of my posts were self serving.

It seems to me that someone on The Blog Team at the Huffington Post has suppressed my publishing rights. Then in jumping to the new contributor platform my credentials slipped through the cracks until that same someone noticed a post of mine going viral. Someone shut my posts off, all four of them, and they have never given me cause or reason for doing so. And in the spirit of community I would think that would be the least they could do. If you’re going to have a spirit of community, you need to be transparent about the rules and allow for questions. Then you answer the questions so the entire community can read them and abide by the updated marching orders. When the information is suppressed everyone suffers.

I’m going to continue to ask the “team” what’s up with my contributions. But I may eventually have to sue The Huffington Post to get an escalation that will get me an actual answer. But I don’t want an answer, I just want to have my publishing turned back on so I can add to my HuffPo archive. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask, in the spirit of community.

Today was a great day. Today I logged into the old Huffington Post publishing platform and was given the opportunity to open a publishing account on the new platform. I jumped at the chance and spaced my four posts out over the morning. Putting one in each of my main categories. Single Parenting, Divorce, and Health. And everything looked great until after lunch.

At that time one of my posts started to take off. I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so excited I took this screencast video of my stats going wild.

I’m concerned mainly because I had been shut out of publishing on the HuffPo platform for over a year without any explanation. I tried sending emails to blogteam@huffingtonpost.com and even the Divorce editor brittany.wong@huffingtonpost.com but never got a single response. What gives? So today I’m back ON and I start to show results and I’m banned again? I sent this letter to the blogteam.

And while I don’t ever expect a response, my posts are still showing as LIVE on my HuffPo author’s page.

I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it. I’m not sure we will ever be told what happened, or why I’ve been banned and am now apparently banned again. For legal reasons (that’s got to be it, right) they are not telling me anything. I’m holding my breath, however, because the thrill of seeing my blog blow up was very nice.

And now my Facebook shares look like this:

I’m sad, but not surprised. I’ll be surprised if I get ANY response out of Brittany or the Blog Team.

UPDATE: This evening I’m afraid to even try and login. My account is in some sort of unstable mode where the site flashes on and off. Here’s the log-in screen.

And what the “Statement of Community” says:

Statement of Community

The Huffington Post’s Contributor Network is a forum for ideas, discussion and diverse viewpoints. We offer a state-of-the-art platform that can help you bring your work to one of the internet’s largest audiences.

Be interesting, be entertaining, be provocative, have a point of view – but do it with a great respect for the readers and writers who join you on these pages. The community we are working to build here is one where diverse, vibrant and original ideas are celebrated and elevated. We welcome posts that embody that free-speech ethos, even when those viewpoints differ from our own.

We reserve our right to remove posts that abuse that spirit of community, such as hate speech, anything overtly commercial in nature and and posts that we believe may be attempting to mislead the public in some way. There may be other times when we will remove a post that has been flagged by our community for other reasons, including matters of professionalism and taste. We hope and expect those times to be rare and we will not take these decisions lightly. But in building this community, we respect the right of its members to be vocal about their objections. When those objections arise, we will leverage the sound judgement of our editors to determine what is best for the spirit of the space we’re trying to create.

Let’s see if the community will respond with an answer to my entire set of posts being taken down.

UPDATE: The mystery continues. This morning when I log-in my account is in some possessed form of code hell. As if they were blocking my account, but didn’t do it correctly.

THE DAY I WAS WELCOMED TO THE HUFFINGTON POST BY ARIANNA HERSELF, I WAS THRILLED.

And the succession of 50 odd posts I got published on the site was also a thrill.

And I generated quite a bit of traffic for my blog The Whole Parent. It was a match made in heaven. I was writing a positive co-parenting blog and The Huffington Post was benefiting (still benefits) from my writing. What I got in return was traffic, a by-line and bio page on The Huffington Post. Boom. I had arrived as a writer.

Then last November, as in a year and 2 months ago, my last post appeared on The Huffington Post under the Fitness and Lifestyle banner. See, I’d been doing so good, I had started publishing from another blog on The Huffington Post as well. But without a whimper or reason, my publishing never progressed beyond submission. And I continued to submit my work religiously.

In general they do reserve the right to NOT publish your work. But I had a 95% publish ratio. We liked each other. I even had a viral hit that was published under the Women banner. It was about dating.

I still have no idea what happened. Does The Huffington Post have a kill button that censors a writer, causing their posts not to show up in the slush pool of available articles? Did someone take offense to something I had written? Had I gotten too big for my britches? Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if I had a clue what I did, or who black-listed me. But I heard crickets.

So I reached out directly to Adrianna. She, in fact, is who personally invited me to the Post. I reached out to the editors of each of the sections I had published with before. Health and Lifestyle, Parenting, Dating, Divorce, Dads. And somewhere along the chain of command, even their responses were shut down. I heard nothing. It seemed there was nothing I could do, but stop publishing, or trying to publish on The Huffington Post.

But my publishing credentials are still live. They are still generating traffic from my content. And they are still not publishing any of my writing. I’m ready to take this to the next level. Now it’s personal.

Let’s look at the editorial board for my biggest section DIVORCE.

I’m pretty sure Brittany is the woman who wrote the Huff Po piece on me. Let’s go see…

Update 8-20-15: I got a Twitter response from Sr. Women’s Editor Emma Gray. And just as I responded to her she deleted the tweet. (Before I was able to screen grab it. But I have the traces captured elsewhere.) Then, I’m pretty sure she MUTED me on Twitter. (A first for me.)

So when she tweeted back to me she said, “That’s above my purview.” She was saying, she had no idea why I was being prevented from getting any articles published. Why then would she DELETE the Tweet and BLOCK me on Twitter? Was I being abusive? Did someone tell her I’m a pervert, or a dead beat dad, or something that makes me offensive? I don’t know. And since she’s muted me on Twitter she doesn’t even see when I tweet at her. BAD FORM Emma Gray BAD FORM HUFFINGTON POST.

So the woman who wrote the nice post on me and my divorce survival strategy doesn’t have the time to respond to me? Or she’s not allowed to tell me what’s going on? Both of which are awful concepts.

One thing is certain: The Huffington Post is being run by children. Low cost millennials who are happy to work for recognition and ego strokes. Titles like Editor and Executive Editor on one of the globe’s leading media publishing companies. Pretty impressive to me, as well. But the youngsters are running Adrianna’s empire as she continues to cut media deals.

Adrianna had a vision for The Huffington Post. She’s too busy with her GMP and Good News love fest to pay attention to what’s going on in the inner workings of her Blog Team. And why should she. We know the power of the Huffington Post is politics. And we’re ramping up for a doozy of an election year.

So I’ve been swept under the proverbial rug. But I won’t go quietly. It’s time to blast and blanket the editorial team until I get an answer. I’ll start with the woman who wrote the piece on me. Let’s see if I can get a single response out of a single human being (young human being) about why I can’t get any of my 30+ submissions published, when I still have 50 articles live on The Huffington Post.

I never give up. The dream was big when I got accepted and added Huffington Post author to my material. Today, it’s been a year and 2 months since they pushed on of my articles live. I’m still writing at the top of my game, and still writing about positive post-divorce strategies for parenting, dating, and staying healthy. What’s not to love?

I’ve still got Brittany’s email address. Let’s see if she will share some information about WHAT’S GOING ON AT THE HUFFINGTON POST?

You may try to create great content, let people know your Twitter ID, and use it as your content signature, like I did/do, but that strategy, even for a blogger that gets 30,000 reads a month, will average you about 2 – 3 new followers. You’re just not going to get any momentum if that’s your approach.

What do you think, a couple new followers a week, or this…

Here’s the framework for building your flock.

Follow as many people as Twitter will allow you to.

Follow people who you would like to have following you back.

Add influencers to LISTS that you curate.

Follow back the people who are following you – if they are “of value” to your networking efforts.

It can be difficult to find people to follow. Here are some ideas.

Look at the people who are following you. Are there any valuable targets? If so, go follow the people they are following.

Search for #hashtags you want to dominate and populate. Follow the people who are movers and shakers.

Follow the superstars in your industry. Follow who they follow.

And the final ingredient: Unfollow non-followers every month to open up more following slots.

To build an active and targeted Twitter following required effort, focus, and clear goals. Once you have a good flock started, make sure you don’t spam tweet at them. And make sure you’re tweeting on message.

The Easy Growth Process

a. Follow good tweeters and leaders
b. Season the list and let them follow you back
c. Unfollow non-followers
d. Repeat.

I tried asking questions first. For a month. And got no reply from any of the Blog Team or directly from Arianna. Dear Huffington Post, WTF Is Going On with You? So, I guess I need to dig a bit deeper to see if I can understand what’s going on with the conversation about Parenting, Relationships, and Divorce at the Huffington Post.

Women *and* men get divorced, our children are along for the ride, we both make the difference in how their lives and future relationships will be managed.

I am not claiming that men’s voices have been completely shut out of the Family & Relationships sections of The Huffington Post. But I do see that the Divorce, Parenting, and Dating posts are 95% by women for women. Something bigger is going on here. Something that creates a complete imbalance in the viewpoints discussed, something that misses the fact that in traditional parenting one woman AND one man are required.

I was a Huffpost blogger with great success in the Parenting, Dating, and Divorce sections. I’m not saying I made the Front Page, but I often made the front page of these sections. And my posts are still live on The Huffington Post, gathering traffic for them, and a few click-throughs for me. And I’m very interested in keeping men in the conversation about these very important topics. I’m a contributing editor to The Good Men Project, who regularly shares content with The Huffington Post. Even last week, one of our editors, and good friend, Mark Greene was interviewed by Huffington Post about his transformative ideas about divorce and parenting. BRAVO!

But why are there no men editors in the entire staff of Family & Relationships? If you look at The Good Men project, a site that shouts, “The Conversation That No One Else is Having,” you’ll see a pretty even balance between men and women. It’s important, even in a powerful site about men that women and women’s voices are represented fairly. So why is the Huffington Post so down on men? Or is it just me?

Here’s the staff section from Family & Relationships section of The Huffington Post.

And while it’s not a bad thing to have mostly women, and mostly women in their twenties and thirties running such a critical portion of The Huffington Post, can you see how their perspectives might be a bit skewed? And when the Senior Editor on Divorce is also the Senior Editor on Weddings… And is, just getting married… You can imagine that “divorce” might not be one of her points of interests. And I’m guessing not part of her history, either.

I’m not sure how I would compartmentalize my enthusiasm for this major beginning in my young life, while espousing the views and pains of so many older women, and yes, men. And it’s sorry what’s happened to the sections over all. The conversation is not so much a conversation any more, it’s a blast of celebrity reporting (marriages and divorces) alongside some well-known authorities on dating and divorce. And mostly… eh hem… women.

And I have to respect the business model here. The Huffington Post is in this business to make money. And if their demographic is 90% young upwardly-mobile women, well, then I guess they’ve nailed it. But I’m pretty sure the intension that Erma Bombeck had when she convinced Arianna to start the divorce section was something more inclusive. After all, divorce usually involves two people, and 50% of those people happen to be men.

The story that Arianna tells is that she was approached about adding a Divorce section and she asked Erma why. Erma responded, “Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever.” It’s on the Divorce Masthead, though no longer attributed to her. The light went on for Arianna and the section was born and has thrived ever since.

I’ve chosen to live my life and to survive my divorce by finding the good in everything that comes my way.

I met Arianna at a trade show in 2013 where she spoke about her newest passion, The Third Metric. In that meeting of high-level communicators, she gave out her email address asking the audience to send her their ideas. And true to form, she responded to my email within a few hours of that trade show. I imagined her zooming to the airport in her limo and cleaning out her inbox with a fury and efficiency.

At that moment, she caught my voice in the post that I sent her. Here’s her emailed response to me that same day. It was a HUGE win for me.

And 8-months later I really hit the post sums up the bulk of my writing on Divorce.

click to read article on Huff Po

Getting men’s real and honest stories in the mix of the conversation about Parenting, Dating, and Divorce is critical for all of us.

What you see there is a picture of a dad’s hand and the hand of my two young children. I have pledged to say 100% positive about my divorce, and in all of my dealings with my co-parent and ex-wife. That’s my message. There are Good Men who get divorced. There are good father’s who try to stay connected as often as they are allowed, even when the system is stacked against them. I write The Whole Parent as a voice for men who are doing parenting right, before, during, and after divorce.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get new posts up on The Huffington Post. And I’m not sure that’s important to me any more. But getting men’s real and honest stories in the mix of the conversation about Parenting, Dating, and Divorce is critical for all of us. Sure, professionals who write about the subject and offer platitudes and brief sounds bites of men’s stories, to illustrate their points, are fine, but they are professionals, and therapists, and lawyers. Even if they’ve been through a divorce of their own, they are now making it their business to tell us what to do.

When The Huffington Post lost Farrah Miller as an editor (she was the person Arianna cc’d on the email above) we lost an experienced editor with a broader vision.

I don’t know what to do. I only know that I’ve chosen to live my life and to survive my divorce by finding the good in everything that comes my way. Have I lost a lot in the process, yes. But I have also gained a new voice, a resonant voice that comes from deep within me, and sings out MY STORY, and ultimately, MY POSITIVE STORY OF DIVORCE.

I think men need to be in the conversation, and I would like Arianna Huffington to address this lopsided conversation with the same vision she had when she started the section with her dear friend. Women and men get divorced, our children are along for the ride, both partners have a huge impact on our kids lives and future relationships will be managed. If only a small percentage of the posts are by men, and 90% of those men are relationship professionals (lawyers, coaches, and therapists) rather than fathers, then the conversation on the Huffington Post is written by women and to women. That is not a not a holistic or healthy conversation at all.

Update 10-4-15: I suppose a smarter blogger would’ve given up by now. I mean… Really, is there any confusion about the message they are sending me? But if they’ve cut me off, why don’t they cut me off? Why don’t they kill my account (I posted another article last week) or kill my archive? Maybe all I really needed from being ON the Huffington Post was the ability to say “frequent Huffington Post contributor” on some of my biographical material. But that’s not really it. My quest continues, because somewhere the blogteam@huffingtonpost.com is getting my emails and my postings. And someone in the chain of command has flagged my account, so that none of the channels (Divorce, Women, Parenting, Healthy Living, or Technology) are picking up my offerings. Nobody. It’s odd. And the only thing I have is my ability to escalate and investigate. Let’s turn up the heat and see if we can get a rise out of them.

Update 9-2-15: Are Men’s Voices Being Silenced on The Huffington Post?

Update 9-1-15: Tomorrow it will be a month. I’ve tweeted at the editors, and blog editors, and relationship/divorce/dating editors. NADA. Hmm.

Update 8-27-15: I suppose you *can* simply ignore a blogger’s questions. But the blogger, if persistent, is going to continue to make waves. I have no more escalations on this post, time for a new track, perhaps. Hello, Salon, we need to talk about what’s going on at the Huffington Post.

Update 8-21-15: I really thought I was going to get an answer by now. Some answer. Some outreach. Even if it was someone saying, STFU. Instead, yesterday I got a Twitter response from Sr. Women’s Editor Emma Gray. And just as I responded to her she deleted the tweet. (Before I was able to screen grab it. But I have the traces captured elsewhere.) Then, I’m pretty sure she MUTED me on Twitter. (A first for me.)

Perhaps this is a bigger story. I’m looking into a more alarming trend: Are men’s voices being muted on The Huffington Post? Typically, women write 90% of the posts on Parenting, Divorce, and Dating. And a good portion of the leadership at the Huffington Post are women. That’s all fine. But when strong male voices are shut out, without explanation or cause… Well, it’s a bigger story, and through the feedback I’ve gotten as a result of this post, I am by no means alone in my quest for answers. Stay tuned.

Update 8-15-15. I guess I’m an optimist. I’m still submitting, imagining at some point someone in their organization will think it is appropriate to answer me. I’ve tweeted, emailed, and submitted, but I’m getting ZERO feedback. What gives? RADIO SILENCE DAY 13! Here are my submissions during this last 13 days.

+++ Dear Huffington Post, WTF is going on with you? You don’t call, you don’t write. And my once hot connection has grown icy. Nada. Ziltch. I’ve even written directly to Arianna, who invited me in the first place. Please let me know if we’re breaking up, or if I’ve violated some unspoken rule, cause I really want you back. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Here’s my archive, so you remember how close we were: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcelhenney/ Maybe the Huffington Post is undergoing some huge changes and cannot respond to everyone in a timely manner. Maybe I did something wrong and one of the freelance editors put a black mark against my writer’s profile and I’m never going to get a post published on The Huffington Post again. Maybe my writing went off a cliff and now sucks, some combination of whiny divorce posts and pathetic fitness journals. Maybe… But I am not getting any answers from the “blogteam.” Ever. Not a peep. I keep submitting. I keep writing and publishing, in spite of my Huffpo death. But I’m confused at how a professional organization can simply cut off all communication. Not one response from anyone on the editorial board for 9 months? That seems

Unprofessional

Abusive

Rude

My professional life does not hinge on putting “Huffington Post” in my bio. But I do know that my ego took a nice leap the day I was accepted by Arianna herself, to be a voice on the Huffington Post. And we had a great run. I published 2 – 3 articles a week. Maybe we got burned out. Lost interest. Grew bored of one another. I don’t know, but it wasn’t on my end that the relationship has grown silent. See, that’s what I do. I’m a relationship blogger. A divorced dad blogger. A recovering fitness blogger. A writer and communicator. I have not been quiet about my silence. But nothing I have done has produced even a peep out of the blogteam. So I’m going public. Here on my marketing blog. To ask The Huffington Post team directly, on social media, “What causes you to kill a writer on The Huffington Post?” That’s essentially what’s happened. I’m still putting up posts. (1 – 2 per week) I’m still hoping that someone will respond or some post will find an editor who’s willing to break my dry spell, or tell me why I’m no longer relevant. I suppose if something had happened, and my credentials had been revoked, that would’ve at least let me know what was going on. So, after some 50 posts on “divorce,” “healthy living,” “business,” “dating,” “parenting,” and “relationships” I’m just done? That makes no sense.

I generated hundreds of thousands of hits and page views for the Huff Po.

I’m still writing good stuff, based on the growth and readership of my 100% positive single-parenting blog. The Whole Parent.

And this is how you treat me?

Dear Arianna Huffington and The Huffington Post, Please forgive me if I’ve done something wrong, but can you ask your editors to at least answer my requests? Can you ask them to tell me directly why they’ve rejected 50 posts over the last 9 months?

More importantly, can you please start publishing my content again. It helps. I like The Huffington Post. I like being part of blogteam@huffingtonpost.com. But I don’t like being ignored.

I couldn’t get Marcos to respond either. Ho hum. 20-days and counting… (grin) My submissions are still going through. Here’s the nice message you are presented with on the Movable Type submission site. I’m stumped. I would love any ideas, feedback, or stories about how you’ve either gotten silenced or gotten a response from the Blog Team at the Huffington Post. I’m still waiting for any kind of response. You see, for a minute there, I felt like I was PART of the BlogTeam on the Huffington Post. I guess never was the case.

I’ve been through my troubles with A2Hosting. Back in the day, I quit them completely. But I came back when an executive offered to give me 6-months of free hosting on their new “lightning fast” servers using SSD drives. And most has been right with the world since coming back to the mid-tier hosting provider. But am I getting dinged yet again, by having too much traffic. Or is it WordPress? Or some configuration problems on my end (plugins – bad or inefficient css templates) or something on their “shared server” setup for my specific account? I don’t know.

Today however, I was again frustrated by my daily resource overload notice from my “super-fast” and supposedly state-of-the-art hosting service.

That’s what it looks like to my visitors when my hosting service tanks under the load. Sure, I’ve got a few Twitter followers, and I suppose they are active users, but I should not be able to overload my server at will. And besides, it’s the antithesis of success. A great tweet or great post kills the opportunity for 50% of the potential visitors. How many of you would wait a few seconds and hit reload? How many of you would say, “NEXT”?

I’m guessing the problem is not going to get better. I’m working the web pretty hard. And I have three sites on A2, all of which, are business-critical for me. And more importantly, I’m dependant on a steady flow of traffic to these sites and am working to gain momentum and audience for all three of them. When my site says to the new visitor “temporarily unable to service your request” I’m thinking that’s a FAIL. And not a minor fail. An uber-fail.

A fail that looks bad to my new visitors. And get this, I do this stuff for a living, I hold out my shingle saying I can get YOUR web done right, and guess what? Even with premium hosting, I can’t get my own web done right. Would you be excited to click the little affiliate banner for “Lighting Fast Hosting” at the bottom right of my blog? Um, I think A2 and I have some consulting to do together.

This morning I sent them this tweet.

And their response was immediate.

And over the next few minutes we conversed on Twitter. (See My Twitter War Grip Post)

And after a few back and forth discussions about what was happening, I got this email.

So, this is customer service and Twitter done right. We exchanged some info via my customer complaint on Twitter. And A2 responded both with Twitter and by opening a support ticket. That’s customer service in the cloud.

Now let’s see what we come up with for a solution. I’ll let you know how things go.

And if you’d like to move your site to A2, I highly recommend them. If you’re burning less than 3,000 page views a day, I’m sure you’ll be fine. And the SSD is amazingly fast. It makes working within WordPress manageable again. My Affiliate Link for A2 Hosting.

The story continues, stay tuned.

First uh oh, update (ten-minutes later): Surely this was a blip. Maybe they are moving me to my own SSD drive, or something else. All is back up now. (grin)